


I don't want a lot for Christmas (this is all I'm asking for)

by Azdaema



Category: Folgers "Home for the Holidays" Commercial, Under The Pendulum Sun - Jeannette Ng
Genre: Brother/Sister Incest, But hey i tried, Christmas, F/M, I wrote this in a very limited timespan and it shows, Inspired by Folgers "Home for the Holidays" Commercial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azdaema/pseuds/Azdaema
Summary: Tracking time in Arcadia is screwy, and Cathy arrives in Arcadia on what is—by Laon's reckoning—the cusp of Christmas.
Relationships: Catherine Helstone/Laon Helstone
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	I don't want a lot for Christmas (this is all I'm asking for)

"Laon is away?"

"Away-away. Very away. Away for so long. Back soon."

"When?"

"Soon. Before the birthday party."

"Whose birthday?"

"Jesus."

I took me a moment to parse the gnome's meaning. "Laon will return to Gethsemane before Christmas?"

"Yes, yes. _All went to be taxed, every one into his own city._ He must return by then."

* * *

There were no stars in Arcadia. The stars I'd known back in England were the suns of other words; Arcadia's sky was no home to other worlds, no suns but the singular pendulum.

I stood alone in the roof of Gethsemane, warnings about leaving my room after nightfall ignored, though still anxious in my mind. The inky vastness of the starless sky threatened to swallow me whole, yet it loomed no greater than the darkness inside, no more disconcerting than the door that refused to stay bolted. Looking down, Arcadia was cloaked in snow, which seemed vaguely to glow in the light of the fish moon. The fae secrets were locked away in ice, consecrated in the silence that snow always brings.

The air was biting cold, but still and windless. My shawl was still hung on a peg in my room, passed over in favor of taking my entire quilt from my bed and wrapping it about me. In slippered feet, I crossed the castle's curtain walls, decided a stair, and found myself—to my suprise—successfully reaching the garden as I had wished to.

Calling it a _garden_ felt foolish, devoid of any greenery as it was. _Courtyard_ would be a more fitting term, but Mr. Benjamin insistent on calling it a garden. "It is the garden, for I am its gardener. The once and future garden." To my slight amusement, I found myself using his term as well, even in my own mind.

I made a slow loop around the garden, one hand brushing at the snow, the other, deep in the folds of the quilt, rubbing mindlessly at the face of Laon's compass with my thumb. I brushed the snow from one vague shapeless mound, revealing a fountain underneath. Beneath the powder, my fingers hit ice, the basin still half-filled when it froze.

Next to the fountain, a second, lower form proved to be a stone bench. Once the snow had been brushed off, I settled myself on it, bundling my quilt more warmly around me. Withdrawing the compass from the folds, I clicked back the metal lid to reveal the glass face, and the needle pointing north.

One Christmas, as a child, Laon and I had debated whether the Christmas star had been a miracle or the North Star. That night we had peered through the window, looking for the North Star, and—when we'd been unable to see it—had crept outside to find it. I could not remember whether or not we had actually located the North Star; what I did recall is pelting each other with snowballs, each volley a gruilla attack in the dark, and then sticking our snow-cold fingers under one another's arms to warm them.

* * *

I did not _think_ I had dozed off. I knew the dangers of falling asleep outdoors in winter, even if— _especially_ if—you did not think you felt cold. And yet, next thing I knew, there was some dim light in the sky, and someone stood before me, speaking.

"What illusion are you? What spirit sent to seduce me?" Caught between sleep and waking, I struggled to catch on. "There is a _geas_. We are within the walls the Gethsemane!" Sudden horror flooded his face and he looked back wildly toward the gate. "I must have lost my way; this must be the wrong place."

I uncoiled from where I sat, struggling for words. "I am your sister."

"We are within the walls the Gethsemane!" he insisted. "I am protected here!"

Unable to find my own words, I used prefabricated one. " _Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy._ "

His eyes widen, and for a second he froze. "No," he whispered, almost inaudibly. "No..." Then he shook himself violently, like a dog shaking off water. "What tidings of great joy?"

Sudden anger flared in me, burning back the cold and sleep that still clung to me. "I had _hoped_ ," I began, hand fisting in the snow in anger, "that me being here would be such a tiding. Was I mistaken?"

I saw the realization dawning in his eyes as I spoke, but in that instant I was already decided. I had not groveled to the missionary society, come all this way, and waited imprisoned in these walls for over a month only for my brother to deny me. I hurled the fisted handful of snow straight at his face.

It struck his temple in a puff of snow, and for a moment he just stared at me, flabbergasted, and I felt suddenly sheepish at this display of childish petulance. But then he was calling my name and running to embrace me, and it did not matter.

* * *

Inside, the Salamander had set out a percolator of coffee. Laon sighed in relief when he smelled it.

"You drink coffee now?"

"As they say, ‘a simple innocent thing, incomparable good for those that are troubled with melancholy.’ And it keeps my head clear."

The joviality that had come over him had vanished nearly as quickly. " _Are_ you troubled with melancholy?"

He closed his eyes for an instant. "Cathy, please don't. Not now. We will discuss this after Christmas."

Without another word, I poured myself a cup of coffee as well, sweetening it with sugar. Only once that was done did I ask, "When is Christmas, for that matter."

"Today."

"Today?"

"This is Christmas Eve." Softening again, he added, "If I had known you were coming I would have gotten you a gift."

I thought of the handkerchief I had begun to embroider for him before he left, which even now, four years later, I had not brought myself to finish, and blushed, shaking my head. "I came here for you, Laon. You are my present."

**Author's Note:**

> Footnotes:
> 
>   * Bible quotes from the King James Bible, after being told by an Episcopal priest that that's the one Victorian Anglicans in England would be using.
>   * [_British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History_ by Colin Spencer](https://books.google.com/books?id=w8SIDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false) — "Here in Britain, the image of the coffee drinker had from the very beginning been a highly masculine one, bound up with politics and commerce, and was not easily assimilated into the domestic scene; similarly from the very beginning tea drinking had been a feminine pursuit associated with the decorative arts."
> 

> 
> Also I kinda dared my friend to write a version of this premise too, and you should check it out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21924028) because it's better than mine.


End file.
